


Fireworks

by rosiedoesfic



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, M/M, New Years Eve, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 12:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosiedoesfic/pseuds/rosiedoesfic
Summary: It's New Year's Eve, and Joe has a decision to make.





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyginger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyginger/gifts).



> A short fic I rushed out today, trying to get something posted for the festive season! It's still New Year's Day somewhere...
> 
> It's also a gift for the lovely HeyGinger, who is an awesome friend and beta. ♥

**Fireworks  
** _I could be an accident but I'm still tryin'_

 

"So, you're gonna do it, right?" Andy urged from the side of his mouth, hiding himself behind a cup of pop.

Joe shrugged and shifted a little nearer, to bump shoulders and shout a little closer to his ear over the sound of Chris's DJing efforts. "I dunno, man… I kind of don't wanna start the new year with a split lip…"

"Dude, she's been making eyes at you all night - you invited her, and she came down - you have a prime reason to go in for a big, old smooch! Tonight could be your night!"

It was true, he supposed, but he was nervous - and not just because he was afraid of a haymaker from a girl who'd actually been showing an interest. 

What the others didn't know was that he hadn't actually invited her, she'd invited herself. Every gig they'd played, recently, she'd tracked him down to say hi and smile at him sweetly. At first he'd just thought she was friendly, but a couple of weeks ago, she'd started asking if he was dating anyone, and he'd glanced wistfully over her shoulder before answering, "Not yet…" And that had apparently been enough to unleash  a series of events that had wound up here: New Year's Eve at their apartment, a party in full-flow and Joe awkwardly trying to entertain her, knowing exactly what was supposed to happen at midnight and trying to convince himself he may as well go for it, seeing as he was too lame to try anything else.

It wasn't that he disliked her, or that she wasn't pretty - she was, and she seemed nice - it was just that he'd really sort of had other hopes for that precise moment.

Right now, she was using their broom closet of a bathroom while Andy gave him a pep talk and Joe kept one eye on the scene across the room, where Pete had corralled Patrick into a corner and was kneading at his shoulder while rambling at him with a serious frown on his face. Patrick, for his part, was flushed and nodding pensively, staring into his plastic cup while he presumably absorbed Pete's personal theories on why everyone betrayed him in the end (except Patrick, obviously).

Absently, Joe sighed, watching the one-sided exchange. It had been kind of a big year. They'd released not one, but two albums with varying degrees of willingness, travelled all over the place and spent a whole bunch of time camping out in his shitty van, and ten days ago, they'd released their third single. But the biggest thing that Joe was ending the year with, though, had actually started in March, in the warehouse they used for band practice, thirty minutes after Patrick had tried to open the band a new revolving door by way of choking their bass player to death over a debate on whether the lyric should be 'looks' or 'feels'. They sunk into the tattered couch at the back, together, adrenaline from the altercation rapidly fading, and Patrick had slumped his head on Joe's shoulder, guilty and stressed, until Joe had tucked his arm around him for comfort and said, "For what it's worth, I think you're right and I'm like, pretty sure he thinks you're right, he's just bored."

"No… he's right," Patrick had sighed, morosely. "I've just got to accept I can't write words for shit."

"You don't need to write them for shit, dude," Joe had teased, "you need to write them for songs. Maybe that's your problem."

It wasn't, admittedly, his wittiest quip of all time, but it had made Patrick laugh and that had made Joe laugh and the arm Patrick wrapped around his belly to give him a grateful squeeze had popped some kind of invisible balloon of attraction inside him, like the time he sat on a packet of chips in the van and made a horrible mess of crumbs everywhere. And once it had burst, it had saturated him completely, and the rest of the year had been one long, soggy embarrassment of affection. A growing, wet pool of patheticness, in which he was a mortified island of lame.

Patrick, for his part, had begun to confide in him, afterwards. He'd hang out in his room every evening, until he and Pete reluctantly buried the hatchet, and then at least a few times a week ever since. They'd been really good friends ever since they met, but suddenly they were  _ super close friends _ and it had been awesome on the one hand; and not infrequently, really awesome  _ in  _ the other. He'd even started to think that maybe, with a decent tail wind and a family pack of good luck, he had maybe a snowflake's hope in a cold day in hell.

But Patrick was apparently interested in someone, and he'd learned this in snippets of conversation overhead as he passed Pete's bedroom or when they thought he was asleep in the van. It had taken his breath away, much like an incident involving falling off a rope swing while trying to look cool at camp when he was thirteen. And although, exactly like the time at camp, he'd wanted to lay on the floor and cry, he'd gotten back up and acted like it had barely registered. 

He had his suspicions about who it was - a bean pole in bootcut jeans at least two inches longer in the inseam than the ones Patrick wore - and he'd thought Patrick had asked her to the party, but she wasn't there. Which kind of sucked, honestly, and made Joe feel a little bad for him, but also meant that his original plan was way more viable than he'd thought - if it wasn't for the dual complications of the fact Patrick presumably still liked her and the girl who liked Joe was currently 'powdering her nose' in their bathroom, with two minutes to spare until the big moment.

So, really, Joe was left with two options: be the asshole who kissed someone who probably wasn't interested, in front of the girl who thought they were on a date he'd never asked her on; or kiss the girl, give her the happy start to the new year that she seemed to want, and see if this whole thing wouldn't blow over… Unless he'd also misread the whole thing and did, in fact, wind up with a split lip. 

"Right!" Andy announced, leaning away from the TV cabinet, "I'm gonna refill my rootbeer and pick out a lucky lady who looks like she needs help greeting the new year! Don't waste your chance, little bro - public service roles don't pay great, but it's a steady job and somebody's got to do it…"

He was gone in a puff of inexplicable sexual competence, leaving Joe to look expectantly at the living room door, waiting for her to return. She appeared at the exact moment that the countdown started, as everyone barrelled into the room, jostling for a space or to find their significant other, her lips shining a glossy plum, tucking her hair behind her ear as she smiled at him coquettishly.

Well, this was it. He was either going to get smeared in fruity-scented slime or punched in the mouth… 

He straightened up, trying to push between the two couples in front of him, already embracing - and then the lights went out. A few girls - and what sounded like Charlie - shrieked. Pete cackled - he'd flipped the breaker, apparently, because everything had gone off - the lights, the TV, the stereo, the fucking oven (which Joe would have to reset the clock on) - and it was pitch dark, apart from the slivers of light through the blinds. Nobody was discernible as anything more than a vague silhouette in person-form, but he felt a hand fumble against his in the crush and latched on to it, following the wrist up to an arm and holding on, pulling her closer until he felt what he assumed was one of her hips bumping against his thigh. He was breathless again, but it wasn't the feeble gasp of heartache, this time, it was anticipation. Or possibly stress. Maybe a low-level panic attack.

He took the biggest gulp of air he could manage as the countdown ended and the cry went up -  _ Happy New Year! _ \- determined that he could do this, and dodge directly into a profuse apology if he'd misread the situation. 

So, he ducked his head a little, nosing around and finding what felt like her bangs in the shadows, aiming for a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek to test the water. But that cheek was turned faster than a put-out Catholic's, and his lips met two others, soft and moist and purposeful.

_ Oh. _

Well, there was no slap, at least, and Joe's eyes had fallen closed instinctively, blocking out everything except the tender movement - a peck that had quickly escalated until they were pressed close, hip to hip and chest to chest, and this was  _ good.  _ He could  _ do this _ \- he could even -

Joe found himself standing, breathless with his mouth damp as someone in the hall yelled at Pete to stop being a dick and put the electricity back on, no longer clasped against another body.

He squinted as the light flicked back and reached up to rub his lip on the back of his hand, grinning at the thought that he probably looked like the clown from Blood Harvest, only to realise that not only were the lips he'd kissed not sticky with lip gloss, they were pouting immaculately across the room.

He stared at her, wide-eyed, watching her grab her coat from the arm of the couch and skulk off towards the door, and it was only then that he noticed that Patrick was no longer in the corner - he was hovering awkwardly next to Joe, his cheeks flushed as he sucked on his bottom lip and tugged his cap back onto his ruffled hair. 

_ OH. _

_ Oh, fuck. _

"Um… happy new year, I guess?" Patrick smiled nervously.

"Er… happy… dude, what  _ the fuck _ just happened?"

They were sitting out on the wooden bench on Pete's balcony, when Patrick sort-of-explained. They'd taken the key and locked the door so no one else could come out there, and Joe was still a little in shock.

"How do you mean 'orchestrated', dude?" Joe asked him, the same question put a third way just to make sure he was really, really getting it.

"Well, y'know… planned. Choreographed, sorta. It was kind of WWE fighting, I guess."

"But dude - I mean, you seemed like,  _ majorly  _ mad at him and everything…"

"I kind of was," Patrick shrugged, "because that was not the lyric we agreed he could piss all over."

It was hard not to laugh at the absurdity of it. Harder not to be at least a tiny bit mad that he'd been put through high school levels of angst when the whole time, Patrick had been scheming with Pete behind his back, but he was just about managing.

"Y'know, your hands are shaking…" Patrick told him, squeezing his fingers around them a little tighter.

"Yeah. I mean, I'm like, pretty wired right now and I don't know if I'm freaking out or just cold…"

Nodding, seriously, Patrick got to his feet. "Hm… you're right, this was dumb, we should go inside -"

"What? No - I didn't mean -"

"I'm just thinking, y'know:  _ my room  _ is way warmer."

"Oh. Right - right, yeah, we should, um…" But even though he stood, his hand still clasped tightly in Patrick's, he couldn't bring himself to make a move to go inside. And they were almost chest to chest again, now, only this time he could see the shine of the street lights on Patrick's lip and glinting in his eyes as he ducked down to kiss him. He didn't, though - he stopped and jerked his head back, suspiciously, casting him a narrow-eyed look as a thought occurred to him. "No, hold on - when did you first, like…?"

It was hard to tell in the yellow of the street, but he was pretty sure Patrick was blushing as he grinned a little and scratched under the back of his woollen cap, with his free hand.

"You remember last year," he asked, glancing up at him from under his hat, "when you and Sisky pretended to make out on the bells because everyone else had hooked up, nearly?"

Joe blinked at him. "Sort of?" He'd been newly very drunk at the time.

"Well -  _ then _ ," Patrick said, and his frown turned resolute at the memory. "I just thought, y'know, 'Look at that dumbass, faking out like a loser, I could do better than that…' And then, I sort of thought, 'Actually, I  _ want to  _ do better than that.' And then Pete kind of told me, 'No, you just want to do  _ Joe _ …' Which was annoying, because it turned out he was right, so…"

"Oh. Well, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have minded, but it would have been way easier if Pete had just kind of like, told  _ me _ , too…"

"You're right, this is Pete's fault."

"It's basically always Pete's fault."

" _ Right _ . So…" Patrick shrugged a little and twitched his eyebrows. "I mean… are we gonna give ourselves something to blame him for, or…?"

"I feel like it'd be rude not to, actually…"

And so, the second time they tried, Joe kept his eyes open when Patrick rocked onto his toes, and wondered how he hadn't noticed the fine hairs on his forearms or the soft fabric of his wristband, and if some joker let off some belated fireworks that startled them both and caused Patrick to bite his lip, then that was also Pete's fault (because the odds were, it  _ was  _ Pete), but it was also an excuse to give it another shot - indoors. Alone. For at least another 365 days.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Fourth of July _and quote from _Where Is Your Boy? / Grand Theft Autumn_ , both by Fall Out Boy.__


End file.
